colony collapse, spring dwindle er what?..don't like the looks of it

[jojoroxx]

QUESTION: If this IS CCD, was I in err by transferring this equipment to my new packages?...c'mon so many of you on here know a lot - please advise.

I experienced the loss of one of my two hives about 3 weeks ago. Although there was abundant honey and pollen, there were just a handful of bees and no normal eggs/brood - multiple eggs in cells - so I assumed they went queenless, had laying workers, and I dismantled the whole works.

My remaining hive (at the time) looked OK; queen present, and good honey pollen stores. Today, after installing 3 packages last night, that all awoke with the morn active and ready to go, and having had a sinking feeling about this hive the last week or so as warm weather failed to illicit much activity from them, I opened the hive up and was met with a discouraging sight. My favorite and best Queen was present, but no eggs/brood and literally barely 2 short super frames of workers. Maybe 2 handfuls.   :'( This was a hive that had FILLED 3 boxes last summer...It still had a full deep and a short super with plenty of honey/pollen etc.

SO - I put this anemic group into a four frame nuc, and combined the full box of honey etc with my newly installed bees.

QUESTION: If this IS CCD, was I in err by transferring this equipment to my new packages? ....i know, little late now  :?....And if is it NOT CCD what should be done with my formerly STAR queen?? Order up a few pounds of workers? Wait? ...they are barely taking the sugar syrup (bad sign) and are just moping around on the frames.

 I am soooooo bummed. When I lost my first hive I tried to be stoic, and all matter of fact about it, but this is my best girl and I am sorrily disappointed that she is not greeting spring with active egg laying, and giving me a replay of her last summer's awesome performance.

Even more bummed if I have inadvertently given this Evil-Whatever-It-Is to my newly arrived packages. (installation went flawlessly BTW) but now, what 2 do what 2 do...after crying that is. :'( :-\ :'(

[jojoroxx]

bump. ;) I am surprised at the lack of activity in this thread.... Has no one else dealt with a situation like this? Should I be concerned about using the honey frames off the dwindled hives for my new packages???

...maybe i need antibiotics...new research on CCD suggests a simple cure for CCD???

[sc-bee]

Yes have dealt with it (or a friend has)?

I think lack of response may be no one really knows what to tell you :?

The hives I have seen would be a deep packed with bees and two shallow supers of honey. Come back in two weeks and a handful of bees or none at all, no brood, no dead bees, and full supers of honey untouched (no robbing or any pest).

We all know what it sounds like,CCD, but no one even knows what it is (just a lot of theories). My friend has lost down from 320 hives to 50 in two seasons. I admit he has been a heavy treater (apistan and terramycin). We also had a spring, season before last, where we had a late freeze and everything was killed. The leaves on the Oak trees even fell off (never seen this in my lifetime) but I am the young age of 51 :-D. I think carry over pollen or lack of was a huge factor, because of nutrition going into the winter. As a rule no one usually feeds pollen here, never had to. But more folks are starting now.

Under a little pressure the state apiary guy finally came and took some samples to send to Beltsville. Of course nothing to report. The state guy say we have people losing bees, that fit the CCD symptoms but we have no CCD in the state.

Go figure :?

[doak]

The five out of seven colonies I lost year before last had that symptom.
Plenty honey and no attackers, robbers, wax moth's, notta.
You may have had a case of progressive swarming or "absconding"
Large built up colonies will sometime swarm several times, until there is only a hand full of bees and a queen left.

The colonies I lost that I suspect was CCD just unnoticeably dwindled away.
They did not disappear in a short time. :) doak

[buzzbee]

Don't be too  quick to jump on the fumagiilin cure for CCD bandwagon.There are a lot of people treating spring and fall with this stuff to prevent nosema(which you shouldn't be treating healthy bees.) I think you will find many of the colonies with CCD may have been treated with this also.
  Were there any other signs of disease in the dead colony? maybe you could have the bee inspector take a look. An experienced eye may find something that is easily overlooked.

[Michael Bush]

I've never had CCD.  I've never dealt with CCD.  Even the scientists don't seem to know much about it and they have studied a lot more than I have.  Sorry I just don't have any experience on which to base a comment.

[jojoroxx]

I've never had CCD.  I've never dealt with CCD.  Even the scientists don't seem to know much about it and they have studied a lot more than I have.  Sorry I just don't have any experience on which to base a comment.

Wow, even Mr Bush can't enlighten me, now i am really up a creek. I thought for sure ... :?

Buzz Bee, no outward signs of disease in that hive, just multiple eggs in cells. Inspection just over a month earlier (in a warm spell in late Jan) revealed a hive in good health. I had requeened in June and they a bit of a time building up in the fall, but I fed them until cold weather set in and the late fall inspection revealed burr comb all over edges and 2 deeps filled with honey, pollen and 2-1 syrup. With the good brood pattern starting out so early I thought we were poised for a healthy trek through the winter. (note: we have had had some wicked cold spells - freezing at night, 40 in day - after an unseasonably warm January... are these just chilled out hives?)

My anemic sorry last hive is indeed anemic and sorry. Compared with my newly installed packages they appear to be done for. Mini cluster and queen still present. No flying for nectar and pollen as my new hives have already set about doing, on day 2.

Bummed no one here has any great advice. Should I be worried about having created the hives I installed my packages into from the excess pollen and all the (unused) stored honey and beautiful drawn comb from my queenless (withered) and now withering hive??

sigh.  :-\ Experiment in progress; live and let die.

[jojoroxx]

Weirdness. From yesterday morning, to this evening, my weak (formerly stellar butt kicker) hive has gone completely empty. The handful sized cluster, and depressed looking queen (marked - so I KNOW  i saw her) that were present there yesterday, are all gone! Where did she go? She is nowhere to be found.

 I am weirded out by this and am VERY concerned for the packages installed on frames and gear from these hives. I have an sick sense of foreboding for those newly installed packages. I hope I am wrong.

...sure wish someone could offer a reasonable explanation, reassurance or philosophical advice. ...or at least hand me a tissue :'( :'( :'(

[Brian D. Bray]

Weirdness. From yesterday morning, to this evening, my weak (formerly stellar butt kicker) hive has gone completely empty. The handful sized cluster, and depressed looking queen (marked - so I KNOW  i saw her) that were present there yesterday, are all gone! Where did she go? She is nowhere to be found.

She absconded with the small amount of bees that were left.  For your future info: To save a hive found in this type of condition it is necessary to immediately begin feeding syrup (that would probably have held them in the hive), and give them added resources.  Since you had just hived some packages I would have changed locations of the troubled hive with one of the packages to give the hive the troubled hive more manpower.  I would have put at least 1 drawn frame from the trouble hive into each of the packages to jump start the queen into laying a mass of bees.  Then consolidated the remaining bees down to a 5 frame nuc with 2-3 frames of the honey/pollen and 2 frames comb.

I am weirded out by this and am VERY concerned for the packages installed on frames and gear from these hives. I have an sick sense of foreboding for those newly installed packages. I hope I am wrong.

...sure wish someone could offer a reasonable explanation, reassurance or philosophical advice. ...or at least hand me a tissue :'( :'( :'(

Your answer lies in this notation:

(note: we have had had some wicked cold spells - freezing at night, 40 in day - after an unseasonably warm January... are these just chilled out hives?)

Cold snaps, chilly winds, and rain can do a lot of damage to a hive of bees in the spring.  The longer those types of weathers last, singlely, grouped, or successive, the worse it would be for the bees.  To me it sounds like your hive met the same fate as 3 of mine did last spring.  A prolonged period (nearly 6 weeks) or wind, rain, snow, freexing temps that lasted from late March into early May caused my hives to starve. 
When starving, especially when the weather doesn't allow them to break cluster to fetch stores, the bees will eat every thing they are standing on, pollen, honey, eggs, larvae, and even pupae still in the white.  They can do this with plenty of stores just inches away but out of reach due to the weather. 
The beekeeper finds a dead out, or just a handful of bees, with what seems like plenty of stores.  But stores are academic here.  If the bees can't get to the stores they starve, period.  In the Spring, with it's fickle weather, you can have lots of stores in a hive and they still starve.  Some call it CCD, I call it inclimate weather for too long at the wrong time.

Here, in the PNW, we are having the same kind of weather as we did last year, cold, windy, rainy, snowy, etc, (it just snowed again a few days ago) but my bees are doing fine.  I've already split one hive and harvest some honey due to wayward comb creations.  The bees are thriving.  The difference is that this year there are enough nice days scattered in amongst the bad days so that the bees are making headway.

[SgtMaj]

Good informative post Brian. 

I would also add that one of the indicators of CCD is that there is brood left behind.  Regardless though, just because it's not CCD doesn't make it any less disheartening.  It always sucks to lose a hive.  But hey, think of it this way, giving those resources to the new packages will help them build up much faster, and you never know how good of layers the new queens will be until they start laying... you might have a couple of rockstar queens there.

[bberry]

Ok, not sure if i can offer you a reason for this but i can speak from experiencing this and as someone who lives pretty close to your region.
This was a wicked cold winter as far as norcal goes and i don't know about you but i was running italians in my hives-these are generally considered good for our region as they are adapted to a more moderate climate-or so i'm told. With the fridgid temps this winter i lost 5 hives-some just disappeared some had thousands of dead bees filling the hives literally frozen. And this was after buttoning them up and feeding them throughout. I was very upset. I do not think this was CCD. I have some concern that in the hives that up and left there may have been some contamination from the vinyards that have now eaten up all the surrounding area-but not sure on that-these hives probably just sensed the bad winter and took off. Oh, and the surviving hives i had healthy and busting seems this spring were my caught ferals. I replaced my lost colonies with a more cold hardy genetic of russian/carnolian hybrids from Tabers in Vacaville, Ca. and now i think i will requeen them later with queens bred from my feral colonies. This is my third year beekeeping and it always keeps you guessing and thinking-and unfortunately you can suffer loses-and it is sad when you do-opening up those frozen hives this spring just tore me up, don't know if it ever gets better :'(

[catfishbill]

i have had a similar problem,but mine were leaving in swarms about the size of a volley ball.out of the four hives that made it through the winter i have had at least 12 swarms.have you seen any swarms in your bee yard?i have been checking my yard at least twice a day.when they come out they are going about 15-20 feet up in a tree and are not hanging around very long,then they are gone.also did you feed sugar syrup and give pollen patties or something similar earlier in the spring?i have not been giving any fumigil or any other meds this spring.some older beeks in my area told me i fed them too much too early.my original hives are almost devastated.the same older beeks said they have seen them swarm themselves out of the hive with only small amount of bees left in original hive.

[jojoroxx]

Thanks for all the great replies and input! "have you seen any swarms in your bee yard?"
No swarms catbillfish, I do regular inspections and to my knowledge these hives have never swarmed. They just dwindled away over the course of about 6 weeks. And maybe there was no brood left (sign of ccd) because too early/cold for brood.  :?

  For your future info: To save a hive found in this type of condition it is necessary to immediately begin feeding syrup (that would probably have held them in the hive), and give them added resources.  Since you had just hived some packages I would have changed locations of the troubled hive with one of the packages to give the hive the troubled hive more manpower.  I would have put at least 1 drawn frame from the trouble hive into each of the packages to jump start the queen into laying a mass of bees.  Then consolidated the remaining bees down to a 5 frame nuc with 2-3 frames of the honey/pollen and 2 frames comb. PNW...with it's fickle weather.... you can have lots of stores in a hive and they still starve.  Some call it CCD, I call it inclimate weather for too long at the wrong time. Here, in the PNW, ... enough nice days scattered in amongst the bad days so that the bees are making headway.

Yours was a reassuring reply and I really want to take hope from your words ....But I still have a very bad feeling about what is going on here.

I am the PNW as well, 20 miles inland, south of Eureka CA at about 2000' elev. I contend there had been enough warm days for them here, as well. There were no signs of starvation ie: dead bees with heads in cells. Both hives had lots and lots of honey etc all within reach of cluster (when there was one.) and I WAS feeding the last hive syrup, (which they were reluctant to take) and there WERE plenty of frames of honey and pollen in the nuc I transferred it to earlier this week. I removed from that hive a nearly FULL DEEP of bee bread and capped honey, plus a short super of honey. I considered trading places with one of the new hives, but didn't like the vibe of that hive with the mopey queen, no eggs and the few whimpy gloomy workers...Next time I WILL though. Per my naive and novice eye it did not look like starvation to me. In fact, I was able to build a double deep, and 2 singles FULL of drawn comb with 5-6 frames full of honey etc in each for the new packages! IMO, these hives had stores galore, and enough warm weather to fetch it. I DO hope it is just a freakish spring demise, and my new packages go on to thrive with the pre set up diggs they were able to move into. Or they'll die. Oh well.

Weather now is calm and very warm; Apples, cherries, pears, dandelion and borage are all in full bloom. Onward.

[doak]

Is there anyone close by "with in" 2 or 3 miles spraying fruit trees?
Didn't notice if anyone mentioned this or not.
Just a thought. :)doak

[Scadsobees]

The weird part to me is the lack of brood.  With chilling, pesticides, or CCD I would expect brood to be left behind.  With apple blossoms you should have had ample brood now.  Even a weak hive should have a little bit.

Did they have brood in the past 6 weeks?

Maybe her majesty ran out of fertilization supplies?

[jojoroxx]

The weird part to me is the lack of brood...Did they have brood in the past 6 weeks?

Maybe her majesty ran out of fertilization supplies?

Interesting idea, and maybe an answer.  She was just one year old having arrived with a package last April, and her brood pattern had been consistent through the new year. BUT there were very little eggs/brood when I inspected early march and reduced them to one deep and a super, removing the lowest deep which was nearly FULL of bee bread, some moldy and wet...I figured she would pick up laying with the spring and warmer weather. Instead they dwindled away. This was a hive that was so intense and huge in the fall I left them with 2 deeps and a super, there was literally that many bees. Even when I removed the lower deep in March I felt confident they were suitably crammed in there. The serious tail end of their dwindle happened while almond, plum and nectarine all bloomed nearby with days warm enough to fly.

Of pesticide spraying outside my property I am not aware. I use sulfur for peach curl 1 or twice a season with no effects observed b-4.

Again, thanks for all the great replies and sage advice! :-*

[Kathyp]

sounds like you lost her during or after your january inspection.  there would not have been an opportunity for them to raise an new queen with the weather. last of your brood hatched out in march.  hive lost.

they had been queenless long enough to try to correct the problem with laying workers.  did you find any drone brood at all or just multiple eggs? 

[jojoroxx]

KATHY P SAID: did you find any drone brood at all or just multiple eggs? 

No drone brood just multiple eggs. Thought it might be the queen "getting going" again, when in the spring a queen may lay some multiple eggs before she gets in her groove; so I waited another couple weeks. By then,then they were do diminished, just a handful of bees, it was a complete loss.

I am primarily grieving the loss of my second (and notably stronger) hive and am very concerned for the packages installed on comb/frames from these 2 derelict hives.  Nosema carinae  (different than nosema apis) has been tentatively linked to CCD or CCD like symptoms and is a viscous long lived spore. :evil: :'(


INFO ON NOSEMA ceranae/apis from wikipedia:   The most significant difference between the two types is how quickly N. ceranae can cause a colony to die. Bees can die within 8 days after exposure to N. ceranae, which is faster than bees exposed to N. apis. The foraging force seems to be affected the most. They leave the colony and are too weak to return, thus dying in the field. This leaves behind a small cluster and a weak colony,very similar to the symptoms of CCD. There is little advice on treatment but it has been suggested that the most effective control of Nosema ceranae is the antibiotic fumagillin....

[Kathyp]

if i were looking at what you have described, i would not assume CCD.  i would think i had lost the queen at a time that she could not be replaced by the hive, and the numbers were reduce in the following months by death, and by drifting to your other hive.

in your other hive, were there signs that the queen had been laying?  had you been feeding them?  if the queen was there and not laying, they may have just moved on. was the hive empty  after you installed your packages?  did your new bees rob out the old hive?

you may have a problem, but i would try to eliminate the other things that might have gone wrong before worrying about disease, or treatment.  hard winters can be killers, so i'd start with examining your winter management and see if there was anything you might have missed.  feeding, location, moisture, ventilation (to much or to little), etc.

[jojoroxx]

in your other hive, were there signs that the queen had been laying?  had you been feeding them?  if the queen was there and not laying, they may have just moved on. was the hive empty  after you installed your packages?  did your new bees rob out the old hive?

you may have a problem, but i would try to eliminate the other things that might have gone wrong before worrying about disease, or treatment.  hard winters can be killers, so i'd start with examining your winter management and see if there was anything you might have missed.  feeding, location, moisture, ventilation (to much or to little), etc.

I appreciate you giving this some deep thought with me, really. Side note: I worked at a medical clinic and there is a saying that goes "When you hear hoof beats, think horses not zebras." Perhaps I have been hearing zebras  ;)

To reply to your well thought out Q's: The hive was NOT empty when packages were installed, BUT it was seriously dwindled out. Queen was present, but making no attempts at brood production. They were so acutely diminished I moved them out of a 1 deep/1 shallow combo into a 4 frame nuc ! (w/plenty of honey/pollen...) Their stores had been abundant throughout the winter. They had many FULL frames of honey so I'd made no attempt at feeding, that is until the packages came & I realized what sorry condition they were in so I fed them routinely with the rest. They made little effort to take that syrup. 2 days after that, the queen and her wimpy little cluster of bees were ALL GONE :shock:. The hive had not been robbed out b-4 or after. There were curious newcomers hovering about, but no attempts were made to enter and obtain any of the stores that were there. (...another creepy sign of CCD...robbers, wax moths, etc do not not immediately plunder the stricken hive)

I appreciate your thoughts on overwinter management and  I HAVE been giving a great deal of thought to it. Screened bottom boards were used all winter (too much cold wet air?) One of the hives (the first to go) faced south..too much wind? I am confident in the feeding routine we used which was to feed heavily in the fall dearth until cold weather came. They had lots of 2-1 syrup put away and capped over (I add a tsp of lemon juice/vinegar/cream of tartar, depending on the week, to prevent crystallization of the syrup) I am likewise happy with their location. Generally east facing, awesome morning sun, on a good hillside for air flow, but protection from the worst of the south and north winds.

All their stores were really quite impressive. As a result the 3 packages I installed literally have multiple full frames of honey and bee bread with which to start their new lives.  And about those little cuties; I just went through them all this afternoon,  85*  8-). Queens are all out, I saw all three ! (...one has barely a dot, I think she might have wiggled when they marked her?!?) :-D There was nice egg pattern in all three hives and lots of fresh comb repairs to the frames they have. Good burr comb here and there, and one hive, which seemed to have way more bees than the others and was given 2 deeps (cuz I have em...) have 3 open queen cells built; one in the center of a frame and 2 towards the bottom!  :? Still,  I rejoiced. If my bees at least did something NORMAL like swarm I'd feel a lot better!!! ;) I'll be  Keepin' and eye on them, I figure they are just practice cells.

I love you for caring about my buzzers.